José Pablo López’s trick to spend Spaniards’ money as if there were no tomorrow and pretend to save on RTVE

The new president of the public corporation will cut the salaries of senior managers, but for now their salaries are not touched. Jose Pablo Lopez has announced these austerity measures on RTVE, perhaps to whitewash the fact that the vertical organization chart designed by La Moncloa has included 14 councilors without powers who will pocket more than 100,000 euros each, with a total cost of the vase-counselors will be 1,750,000 euros annually. The new president of the public Corporation has announced that he wants to cut the salaries of senior management, although he has not yet revealed whether his millionaire salary, which is around 200.000 euros.

And he has articulated a poorist speech a few days after seeing with joy how RTVE paid 7.5 million euros to broadcast 3 Champions League finals (which would have cost citizens 0 euro cents if the public had not bid upwards against Mediaset and Atresmedia). López already announced a few days ago by letter to the 7,000 RTVE workers who saw the slimming of the current management organization chart as “essential”, “clearly overwhelmed”, as well as the reduction of the remuneration “received by the presidency of the corporation and the senior management of RTVE”. “Greater efficiency is essential in all areas, starting with the corporation’s own management structure,” he stated. The paradox is that the first measure of this new RTVE was to provide salaries to the directors who did not have them before, increase the number and leave them without executive powers since they do not have the power to control the decisions of José Pablo López, that is, Pedro Sánchez and his propaganda apparatus and José Miguel Contreras.

RTVE has had 1,293 million euros in 2024

RTVE has had 1,293 million euros in 2024and presumably will end in losses despite the public spending that this year has exceeded 600 million euros contributed by the central government. The lack of rigor in management is evidenced by the fact that RTVE has to return 29.4 million euros, and pay an extra 1.3 million euros, for not executing the HAZ Project, financed with NextGen funds, as planned. The RTVE Institute, as it tells The Independent, It had to train 40,800 students in digital skills. “That involved setting up an infrastructure and carrying out bureaucratic procedures that have not been done properly,” says the aforementioned media. While RTVE loses money, López asks the Government for more. “Our financing is insufficient. We must promote a new Mandate-Framework that increases it and modernizes the services we provide. But we also have obligations: a commitment to budget stability that we must recover in 2025. Greater efficiency is essential in all areas starting by the Corporation’s own management structure,” he explained in the aforementioned letter.

Money for Broncano, Prisa and those from Sálvame

Jose Pablo Lopez calls for cost containment while they rub their hands over their appointment to production companies such as Encofrados Encofrasa (participated by David Broncano), LaCoproductora (owned by Grupo Prisa) or Fabricantes Studio (which makes Ni que fuerámos Shhh…). Other promises from the manager are to revive the work life of some sectors of RTVE. “Out of respect for citizens, we must all strive for a public radio and television that is far from the permanent crisis in which it settled a long time ago,” he says. “The commitment to the construction of an RTVE that is relevant. RTVE must be perceived as reliable, but not only, not only, let’s not fall into the trap of those who believe that the quality of the public service is higher the lower its impact is” , he added by letter. And to justify his future purchases of pink programs he says that “public service without public is not viable, it is the greatest threat to its own continuity. Let us avoid one of the greatest risks that currently exist, which is the risk of irrelevance. We must be references without necessarily confusing that term with leadership at any price”.

The purchase of programs, on target

The Government decree on RTVE gives full powers to José Pablo López, who will be able to hire without receiving the approval of the House’s Board of Directors. Moncloa has made this decision despite the fact that former president José Manuel Pérez Tornero denounced its dark ways. “I understood that the purchase of programs and the selection of production companies had to be done collegially, as a team, with a serious analysis of the different proposals we received, and with rigorous study of the production possibilities of RTVE itself,” he stated. Pérez Tornero said that he created “a protocol in which, if the purchase proposals were supported by content, the negotiation and closing of the contracts corresponded to the company’s legal services.” But the protocol became a dead letter for López, supported then by La Moncloa and now resurrected by the Government, just as we always knew and counted.